In today's web design, Javascript is a must-have component. Aside from its functionality, Javascript can enhance user experience by creating transitional effects such as fading and sliding animation. Thanks to the open source Javascript frameworks, we don't need to write custom Javascript from scratch anymore. Here are 47 Javascript plugins that you can use to enhance the user experience and functionality of your website. Don't forget to check out the sample sites, which show how the plugins can be used.

The Two Popular Javascript Frameworks

Right now, the two commonly used Javascript frameworks are: jQuery and MooTools. Check out the poll below:

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Image Zoom and Popup

You're probably very familiar with Lightbox — a light Javascript used to display overlay images on the current page. The original Lightbox was released in 2005. Since then, there are many scripts released with similar features using different approaches and Javascript libraries.

Thickbox is a jQuery plugin that is very similar to Lightbox, but comes with more features. It allows you to display: single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal.

Galleria is a javascript image gallery written in jQuery. It loads the images one by one from an unordered list and displays thumbnails when each image is loaded. It will create thumbnails for you if you choose so, scaled or unscaled, centered and cropped inside a fixed thumbnail box defined by CSS.

Carousel

jCarousel is a jQuery plugin for controlling a list of items in horizontal or vertical order. The items, which can be static HTML content or loaded with (or without) AJAX, can be scrolled back and forth (with or without animation).

The carousel component manages a list of content (HTML LI elements within a UL) that can be displayed horizontally or vertically. The content can be scrolled back and forth with or without animation. The content can reference static HTML content or the list items can be created dynamically on-the-fly (with or without Ajax).

Sliding Tabs is a mootools 1.11 plugin which adds a pretty neat effect. It’s a clone of something seen on Panic Software’s Coda site, which in turn was very similar to a widget used in the iTunes Music Store.

Flash and Image Text Replacement

sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash.

Facelift Image Replacement is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via Javascript and visible to all modern browsers.

Form Validation

JSValidate is a form validator that utilizes aspects of prototype and scriptaculous to bring you a simple to execute, non-intrusive javascript form validator. With minimal setup, your forms can be processing clean data in no time at all.